Tag: The Lightning Seeds

A lot of my vinyl collection consists of one solitary single by its artist. One such record started out as a studio based project of musicians fronted by Ian Broudie using the group name The Lightning Seeds.The first single to enter the UK charts was “Pure” but a couple of other releases failed to chart and then it would take 3 years to establish the next hit, so by then I’d already mistakenly seen this as a one hit wonder in my mind. Later as a group they went on to collaborate with comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel with the single “Three Lions” dedicated to the England National Football Team and reached #1 in the UK twice in 1996 and with an updated version in 1998.1

Ian Broudie2was born in Liverpool, England in 1958 and became a successful writer and producer in the post punk era. His credits as a producer include Echo and the Bunnymen, The Fall, Alison Moyet and Terry Hall of The Specials.He was also involved with several bands as a musician and composer before forming the Lightning Seeds project in 1989.

Picture sleeve for “Pure”

The track is easy on the ear, with clever use of words. The production value is excellent. I always enjoy music where I’m able to pick out different types of instruments. Apart from a variety of guitars, keyboards and drum sounds there are some brass sections and a tambourine which is played at various tempos. Written, sung and produced by Broudie this is the first song to have his own vocal on it.3

B-Side “Fools”

Despite Broudie’s thinking the single wouldn’t sell, it gained airplay and crept into the UK top 100 soon after release and slowly climbed and peaked for 2 weeks at #16 in the UK and stayed on chart for 10 weeks.4

In the US on the Billboard pop charts, Pure had a peak position of #31 with 15 weeks on the chart in July 1990.5